Mad Men Recap Season 1, Episode 6, “Babylon”

“Babylon” is probably Mad Men’s most entertaining episode to date, but it’s also the most frustrating installment in the series so far. On the one hand, it’s loaded with absolutely priceless lines of dialogue and does a lot to further our understanding of several characters and relationships. On the other, it takes too many of its jokes a little too far, resulting in the largest amount of annoyingly obvious period jokes since the pilot.

The episode begins with an intriguing coda to last week’s episode: Don Draper slips on the stairs and hits his head, resulting in a brief flashback to the day his brother Adam was born in the 1920s. At first glance, it seems to recall the numerous flashbacks to Tony Soprano’s childhood that The Sopranos offered over the years, but there’s a key difference—the flashbacks in “Down Neck” and other episodes were often shown from a relatively objective POV rather than being filtered through Tony’s memory. Here, however, Don Draper and his younger self seem to make eye contact through time. It’s a hallucination, obviously, but it’s also a very effective way to convey the uneasiness of his relationship with the past and the degree to which the events of “5G” continue to haunt him, his apparent ultra-stoicism last week .

After this emotionally tense scene, the episode’s comic streak becomes evident when Don and Betty’s discussion of Rona Jaffe’s 1958 novel The Best of Everything and its 1959 screen adaptation results in Don obliviously claiming that Salvatore’s affection for Joan Crawford constitutes evidence of the screen legend’s sustained beauty. The meta nature of the line makes it a bit of a groaner, but it’s also so funny and effective in context that it’s hard to begrudge Weiner the joke (the same goes for an anachronism I’ll get to way down below).

In any event, the discussion of Crawford leads Betty to revisit her mother’s death, resulting in one of the series’s rawest marital scenes to date. Don waves away his wife’s melancholy mood, saying that “mourning is just extended self-pity” and then bringing up a pygmy tribe he read about that brewed their ancestors’ ashes into beer—a beautiful metaphor for the way he relates to his past, per his binge in “Marriage of Figaro.”

At Sterling Cooper, the focus shifts to Roger Sterling, who continues to be the series’s richest character. Sterling’s wife, Mona (Talia Balsam) makes a crack about how her husband’s grey hair makes him look older than he is, a joke that sort of breaks the fourth wall—many people assume that John Slattery is around 50, but he just turned 44 or 45 (depending on whether one believes Wikipedia versus the IMDB) on August 13—indeed, he’s at least a year younger than George Clooney, the ex-husband of Balsam, Slattery’s real-life spouse.

The interplay between Joan and Sterling’s family at the office, followed by the masterfully-staged revelation of Sterling’s affair with the queen of the steno pool, is one of the series’s most elegant and intriguing sequences yet (and it gives a whole new level of meaning to Joan’s “5G” quip about Don, unlike most of the men at Sterling Cooper, being handsome enough to snare a mistress outside the office). Her remark here about how “food that close to a bed reminds me of a hospital” hints at events which may have shaped her, and she has enough great moments in this episode to make me seriously hope that she continues to be a major player.

When Joan tells Roger that she knows as much about men as he does about advertising, she’s incriminating the hell out of herself in light of how Sterling’s insight into the business has been another source of many of the series’s best lines (this week: “They always say that”, in response to the Israeli official’s remark that her ideal tourist would make as much as Don does). As in Don’s bedroom scene with Betty earlier, there’s a jokey reference to women as the equivalent of cars that can be traded in forr new models. While that’s unfortunately true where the wives and mistresses of the rich and powerful are concerned, the wisecrack is undercut by Joan’s frank description of the sense of power she derives from stringing along multiple sugar daddies. The advent of serious feminism is still a few years off, yet Joan is hardly the only woman who enjoys a significant amount of control over the men in their lives.

Salvatore’s priceless remark about Israel’s most marketable quality being the local tendency toward extreme attractiveness sets up the reintroduction of Rachel Mencken when Don asks for her unvarnished insights into the Israeli mindframe. It may seem like a flimsy excuse to have lunch with her, as Don is obviously still attracted to her, but it also speaks to the cultural-sponge sensibility that makes him so good at his job. Rachel maintains the upper hand throughout the encounter both because she has knowledge Don wants an because she plays her emotional cards so close to the vest. This leads to the breathtaking scene where she reveals her feelings for Don in a phone conversation with her sister. It’s an incredibly well-written and acted scene that may just be one of the most realistic depictions of the way siblings relate to each other that I’ve ever seen in film or television. The scene ends with a blistering assessment of the social rules that bind the characters of Mad Men as tightly as the codes that govern the lives of those in Pride & Prejudice. “It’s 1960, we don’t live in a shtetl, we can marry for love,” her sister argues to Rachel. “I’m not sure people do that anymore” is the solemn reply.

Matthew Weiner definitely overplays his hand in the sequence where the Sterling Cooper secretaries serve as an impromptu lipstick focus group while the men literally watch from the peanut gallery (Pete Campbell even brings a snack!). One secretary’s bleating remark that brainstorming sounds like something difficult is inches over the foul line—it’s hard to believe that any woman could have such a low opinion of her faculties when she’s got the example of Joan walking around in front of her daily.

Joan’s covert manipulation of the focus group and titillation of Roger through the glass marks another display of her power, which we soon learn is something she guards jealously when we see her patronizing the hell out of Peggy when relaying the message that Fred Rumsen (a terrific new character played by Joel Murray) is intrigued by Peggy’s potential as a copywriter. At first glance, Rumson seems like he might be the biggest lush at Sterling Cooper (no small achievement), but he’s soon revealed as someone whose clear-eyed view of the business rivals that of Roger Sterling. Rumsen’s put-down of Ken is classic; ditto the way he uses one of Salvatore’s snarky quips as the jumping-off point for an impassioned—and convincing—explanation of why Peggy might be an advertising natural. Unfortunately, Weiner once again gilds the lily by ending with Rumsen’s too-far-over-the-top observation that observing Peggy’s insight was “like watching a dog play the piano.”

The wave of verbal wit crests in the episode’s climactic sequence, the delicious war of words between Don and Roy, the bohemian poseur with whom Midge is apparently also involved. Midge displays her power by goading the two, then sitting back and watching the sparks fly, and the lads don’t fail to put on an impressive show. The montage that follows as the beatnik poets at the club hand the stage to a corny folksinger, like the wisecracks which cross the line, is annoyingly on the nose (and the song just doesn’t seem right for a 1960 folkie, though that may just be me), but it’s redeemed by the haunting final shot of Roger and Joan in front of the hotel after their latest tryst. Ultimately, we see, Joan’s power at the office and in the boudoir means little if she can’t be seen with Roger in public. And while the liaison may provide Roger with relief from a miserable marriage, the inherent nature of the relationship means that relief will forever be superficial and short-lived. As broad as “Babylon” is at times, it ends on a note that beautifully demonstrates the level of insight that makes Mad Men so special.

Some insanely nerdy historical points:

“Babylon” is by far the most specifically dated episode of Mad Men—since Mother’s Day is the second Sunday in May, the opening scene therefore takes place on May 8, 1960. During Don and Rachel’s lunch at the Pierre, she makes reference to Adolf Eichmann having been apprehended in Argentina by Israeli agents “last week”. Eichmann was captured on May 11, 1960, but was held in a safe house for ten days before he was flown to Israel. David Ben-Gurion made Eichmann’s capture public on May 23 and it first made the New York Times the following day.

For Rachel’s statement to be correct, three weeks would need to pass in the middle of the episode, placing their lunch during the week of May 30-June 3. Even then, a scan of the Times’ online archive suggests that Israeli authorities were vague about the specifics of the capture for quite some time: On May 26, the Paper of Record ran a three-inch unbylined item commenting on a storiy in the Isreali press, which reached the conclusion that “the implication of this dispatch, which was subject to Israeli censorship, was that Eichmann was kidnapped in Brazil or Argentina.” Not until June 2 was Argentina specifically identified by the Times as the locale of Eichmann’s capture, via an AP story which tantalizingly only cites anonymous “reliable sources” as the basis of an extremely detailed account of Eichmann’s life on the lam. This would push us into the week of June 6-11 1960, two weeks after the capture first made the news and a full month past mother’s day. Instead of delving further into pretzel logic to justify Rachel’s line, it’s probably best to just conclude that Matthew Weiner screwed up.

The use of The Best of Everything is a bit off, as Rona Jaffe’s novel was published in 1958 and the screen version was released in October, 1959. The references to Exodus, however, are chronologically accurate, as the Leon Uris novel, published in 1958, was still a bestseller two years later and reached the screen in December of 1960. Unfortunately, the funniest and most stinging line of the whole episode—Joan’s invocation of Marshall McLuhan—is unfortunately an anachronism. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, in which the great Canadian cultural theorist coined the phrase “the medium is the message”, was published in 1964.

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Stephane, you';re right as far as you go, but is everybody who has written about this song tone-deaf? The reggae "Rivers of Babylon" takes its text from the same psalm, but it';s a different song! It';s not merely a case of a different arrangement, the two tunes are utterly unlike. (The reggae song also goes on to include more of the text.) All you have to do is listen to the first five words. One goes up, the other goes down. The song in the episode is a round often attributed to the 18th century American composer William Billings, arranged (as Stephane notes) by Don McLean. I';d be staggered if David Carbonara, the series composer, doesn';t say so. (He';s the one playing the autoharp, by the way.)

I thought it was perfect for the moment, maybe just because I found it ravishingly beautiful and sad: a piece of real honest art, after the self-aggrandizing and feeble acts we see before it. I even decided that Don recognizes this. It';s worth noting that the performer is identified as Midge';s friend, so I have to grant her taste.

Whew, thanks for letting me get that off my chest, even if no one ever sees it.Posted by bklynharuspex on 2009-09-05 00:30:22

Oops, I meant *Matt* Weiner, of course...Posted by Stephane on 2008-08-27 17:28:00

In the featurette "Scoring Mad Men" on Disc 1 of the DVD box set, the composer mentions a conversation with Mark Weiner, where they talked about the song "Babylon", on Don McLean's classic "American Pie" album.

Although the song, based on Psalm 137 (and originally entitled "Rivers of Babylon" - look for Boney M's cringe-o-licious version on YouTube), was originally put to music and sung by reggae group The Melodians, the version we hear in the show, with a folk arrangement and canon vocals, is really McLean's.

Of course, "American Pie" was released in 1971, which makes this an anachronism of sorts, but to me, this arrangement doesn't sound out of place at the Gaslight in 1960...Posted by Stephane on 2008-08-27 17:27:00

You keep referring to Matt Weiner as the writer of this episode. He was not. It was written by Maria Jacquemetton and Andre Jacquemetton. While Matt Weiner is the creator of the show and no doubt oversees its general direction, do give the writers who wrote this amazing story and dialogue credit for their work.Posted by Anonymous on 2008-02-24 01:32:00

Regarding the treatment of women in MM...

I realize that it would be impossible to TOTALLY recreate all the textures of 1960s reality, and this may be a bit of a simplification, but it seems that the female gender as presented in Mad Men, are either ditzes who don't realize and blindly accept their predicament OR those who understand their plight and use their sexuality to level the playing field (and thus are forced to exist somewhat OUTSIDE the "normal" order).

MANY of the women in my life are from that era (my mom, aunts, other family friends, etc.) and TOTALLY bought into (and promoted) their 2nd class citizenship (Mrs. Cleavers if you will) YET were strong-willed, independent females who didn't take any shit from anyone.

BTW Andrew, keep the anachronisms coming. I was proudly able to complain to my wife about a mistake in "Hollywoodland" where a child from 1959 is shown getting an Etchosketch as a gift :)Posted by GCCR on 2007-08-27 18:27:00

I too thought the scene with the secretaries in the focus group was over the top, though I wonder if that is by design. Weiner may be trying to demonstrate just how dramatic the social changes and upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s were to an audience that may not have been alive, or too young to be paying attention, at the time. He's drawing a bright line between two eras in American cultural history, and showing just how illusory life was on the one side of that line. The foundations of these characters' world was crumbling, and they didn't even know it. (Of course, the great irony for Don is that he craves independent women who seem so rare--and forbidden--in the world he occupies.)Posted by Jonathan Potts on 2007-08-27 13:09:00

Anon--

When I point out anachronisms, I'm doing so in an affectionate way that tries to give Weiner et al a way out, rather than busting the creative staff's balls for botched research or being snotty a la Springfield's Comic Book Guy. As a teenager, I was a huge devotee of Marvel editor Mark Gruenwald's 'zine Omniverse, which was dedicated to explaining contradictions in Marvel and DC history and then coming up with theories that allowed seemingly conflicting stories to coexist in the same timeline. My comments re Mad Men's chronolgical gaffes are intended in the same spirit.Posted by Andrew Johnston on 2007-08-27 04:35:00

Mad Men is a drama therefore it's fine by me if dates and times are not exactly accurate. It seems a little too nidgey to get hung up on those incredibly specific details. It's not a history report.Posted by Anonymous on 2007-08-26 23:22:00

The lyrics of the song are straight from the Bible (Psalm 137), so I think it would have to be considered a folk song, and an old one. The Melodians' version is (arguably) the most famous, but that doesn't make it's origin Jamaican. Rastas consider themselves (after a fashion)a branch of the tribes of Israel & often adopt Old Testament language & symbolism to express their world-view (yes, I am simplifying the hell out of this).Posted by Weepingorilla on 2007-08-26 06:33:00

I'm most familiar with the "folk" song as an old reggae tune by the Melodians... Not so much a Hebrew folk song as a Rastafarian one.Posted by Anonymous on 2007-08-25 05:07:00

"I'd heard it said that Nixon adopted a pro-civil rights stance only because of the threat of opposition from Rockefeller"

I don't mean this to carry water for Nixon or be political here (HONEST), but the same could be said of JFK, who really didn't become an ernest champion for civil rights until 1963.

Kennedy's civil rights record in 1960 wasn't exactly pristine.

According to "Presidential Courage," by Michael Beschloss, while running for VP in 1956, JFK courted the South by refusing to endorse the Supreme Court decision in "Brown vs. The Board of Education" (pg 238)

Additionally, in 1960, when asked by JFK to appear with him before the American Legion in Miami, Martin Luther King stated that Nixon was more reliable on civil rights. Also, Jackie Robinson was a very public Nixon supporter (pg 241).

IF Mad Men does choose to devote a lot of time to 1960 election, I hope they'll be up to the task of truthfully presenting the very complicated and intricate dynamics which existed at the time.Posted by GCCR on 2007-08-25 01:54:00

The closed captioning was especially inventive this week. Ice "flow," caviar "Balinese," living on "kibitzes" in Israel, "administrative" propaganda (ministry of), several others. Ultimately, the captioner gave up completely when the toast "L'chaim" was made: all it read was (speaking Jewish).Posted by Jon Delfin on 2007-08-24 18:04:00

For a second in that final scene, I was afraid the show was going to turn into Draper wandering around NYC and having wacky adventures meeting famous luminaries of the time.Posted by Todd on 2007-08-24 17:40:00

It wasn't the folk music per se that didn't strike me as right--I'm a fairly obsessive Dylan fan and am very familiar with the history/chronology of the Greenwich Village scene--but rather the arrangementand the use of the dulcimer that didn't strike me as quite right. It's quite possible my assessment is entirely incorrect, but it just didn't sound right to me for some reason...Posted by Andrew Johnston on 2007-08-24 16:49:00

That whole Gaslight seen was a take off on this photo.

http://www.bobdylanroots.com/dyl61.jpg

Except the Dylan look alike was playing the Mandolin.

What is interesting to me is that Bob Dylan was somewhat of a Don Draper himself. Moving to New York, lying about who he was and where he came from, changing his name to Dylan from Zimmerman. So it was interesting to see Don encounter a Bob Dylan look-alike (but not a sound alike!) singing some kind of Hebrew folk song (anyone ever hear this song before?).

I can't decide if it would have been out of character for Bob Dylan to sing a song like that when he first got to NY. I don't think he was ever out to hide his heritage, he just liked pretending to be Woody Guthrie.Posted by Tim on 2007-08-24 16:26:00

I don't think the folk music was anachronistic, the Gaslight was the cradle of the New York folk scene and people like Dave Van Ronk would have already been playing folk in 1960. People like Bob Dylan, who was visually referenced by the guitar player's distinctive hat which was identical to the one that Dylan always wore in his early years (including on the cover of his debut album), and Richard Farina, who was known to accompany Dylan on the dulcimer at the Gaslight, would not have been around in 1960. Dylan moved to New York in 1961.Posted by Benaiah on 2007-08-24 14:22:00

I did some quick online research, and it doesn't seem as if the Nixon thing is anachronistic. Going by three 1960 articles from Time that came up, it seems Rockefeller withdrew from the Presidential race in January of that year, well before even the New Hampshire primary (then held in late March!) in whick Rocky pulled in approx 2750 write-ins versus 65,000 or so for Nixon. I'd heard it said that Nixon adopted a pro-civil rights stance only because of the threat of opposition from Rockefeller, but if that was the case, Nixon must have done so extremely early in the election cycle, given those dates and numbers.Posted by Andrew Johnston on 2007-08-24 04:57:00

Continuing with minor anachronisms, Roger Sterling claims in the preview for next week's show that Nixon's nomination was merely a formality, but if I recall correctly (from Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters), Nelson Rockefeller was running a strong insurgent campaign right up until the nomination.Posted by Daniel on 2007-08-24 03:17:00